The Barrier to Doctrinal Maturity

0:00So you are committed to reading the Bible every day, which is wonderful. Hopefully with us, as we use the Navigator's Bible reading plan, if you are, you and me and Pastor John, we are all in Hebrews 5 and 6 and 7, those three chapters were all in those chapters at the same time. Now, trying to make sense of this mysterious figure named Melchizedek. Melchizedek. He's like Tom Bombadil in the Lord of the Rings. He's this mysterious and timeless character, but he also just kind of appears and disappears in the plot. So it can be hard to know what Melchizedek is telling us about the glory of Christ. It seems important. Seems those connections are really important, but they're also hard to pick up to sometimes. So we sit there with an open Bible wondering if we were just not smart enough to figure out all these connections. But what if Bible learning is not chiefly about IQ? Today on Ask Pastor John, the primary barrier to doctrinal maturity. We get there from this question. Pastor John, hello, as a long time listener and first time caller.

1:01Thanks for taking my question. I am a beginning Greek student in seminary. How do we understand the flow of thought between the end of Hebrews 5 and the beginning of Hebrews 6 in Hebrews 512, the author rebukes his readers for spiritual immaturity, saying they need someone to teach them again the basic principles of the oracles of God, and they require milk rather than solid food. But in Hebrews 6, 1, he begins with a therefore to sharpen the tension and urges the same people. Let us leave the elementary teaching about Christ and go on to maturity. It seems both passages include the phrase taste our case and the Greek taste our case. Although they modify different nouns, elements and message word, elements and message word. I suggest at least some conceptual overlap in reference to the foundational instruction between elements and message word. So if the readers are so immature that they need to be retot the basics, why does the author immediately exhort them to move beyond those basics? I love this question.

2:02And I love it partly because of the seminary student who is asking it. And he reveals a more penetrating attention to the text than some commentary is due because I checked several commentaries that don't even ask this question. So frustrating. Yeah. And it's essential. The main question is essential to understanding the flow of thought between chapters 5 and 6. So who Ray, who Ray for aciduous attentiveness to the text, which is what we try to teach here at Bethlehem College in seminary. So here's the problem. And I don't think it's so technical that it doesn't have any practical implication. So if you think, this APJ is enough for me. I couldn't go to the next one. No, no, no, hang on because I think you're going to be surprised where this ends up in how practical this is for your daily life. So hang on. Here's the issue. Hebrews 5.12, the writer says, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have

3:08need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God. You need to be better taught about the basics. Now the question is, how does that fit together with Hebrews 6.1, which says, leave the elementary teachings and don't lay a foundation again. That's a good question. And one seems to say, you need to be taught the basics again, 5.12. And the other seems to say, don't lay in the foundation all over again. You keep laying the foundation. Well does he or doesn't he want them to lay a foundation of basics again? You need to be taught the basic principles of Christianity, 5.12. But then, leave the elementary doctrines and go into maturity and don't lay the foundations again, 6.1. And I think the answer is something like this. 5.12 says they need teaching about the basics.

4:146.1 says they should not lay a foundation again. So evidently, there's a difference between what they need in 5.12, the teaching that they need in 5.12 and the laying again of the foundation. There's a difference between those two things. They're not the same. You're not saying you need it and you don't need it. The it is different. One they need and the other they don't. So what's the difference? And I think the teaching they need about the basics in 5.12 is how to use the basics to become mature Christians in everyday life so that they can eat meat, solid food. The focus of their failure is not intellectual or doctrine, even. It's moral. It's practical. You can see this in verses 13 and 14. These are the two verses that come next.

5:14He calls attention. He calls the basic doctrines milk that says solid food is for the mature. So how do you move from milk to solid food? Babes will choke on solid food. So they have to be mature before they can swallow and digest solid food. So the answer seems to be it's the way you use the milk. That's how you become mature so that you can graduate to the solid food. Milk. It's how you handle milk, how you're taught to use the milk is what grows you to maturity. Otherwise you can't eat the meat that only mature people can eat. You can use milk in a way that leaves you a baby or you can use milk in a way that makes you mature. And what is that right way of using milk? Verse 14 gives the answer.

6:16You graduate to solid food when you quote, have your powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good and evil. Wow. That's not what we expected. Yeah. That what I expected. We thought this was all about doctrine and having enough brain power to handle milk is a deck. It's not if you're going to move from milk to solid food from babe to mature, you have to use the milk a certain way. You have to so love the milk be so deeply changed by the milk that you can distinguish good and evil. Community is a deeply moral issue, not just an intellectual one. So I think Hebrews 512 means that you need to press on to maturity by going so deep with the basics that they transform your life and fit you for solid food.

7:16In that sense you need to be taught taught better. So what does the writer mean in 611 when he says, let's get beyond the elementary doctrine and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of what? Foundation of what? What are these elementary doctrines? And he lists six things. Repentance from dead works. Faith toward God. Instruction about washings. Laying on hands. Resurrection of the dead. Eternal judgment. And the striking thing about that list is they're not distinctively Christian. These made up a foundational Old Testament truths and practices. These readers who were Hebrews probably built on the foundation when they were converted. When these readers were converted, these Jewish people were converted to Christianity. These six things, it seems, had been made foundational as a way of helping them understand

8:19the work of Christ. Because Christ is the goal and the fulfillment of all those things. So when verse 1 says they should leave these elementary teachings about Christ, what I think it means is that they should not occupy themselves so much with the pre-Christian foundational preparations for Christ that they neglect the glory of the gospel and how to use it to grow into maturity and holiness. So in summary, what Hebrews 5.12 says they do need is help in using the milk of the basics to grow spiritually and morally into maturity so that they can digest solid food. And what they don't need is to keep on occupying themselves with Old Testament and Jewish truths that were used as the foundation for presenting and understanding Christ.

9:21That's my basic understanding of how they fit together. And maybe the most surprising and relevant things. This is what I said, you'd be surprised by when you get to the end of this APJ. The most surprising and relevant thing to learn from Hebrews at this point is that the primary obstacle to doctrinal maturity is spiritual and moral, not intellectual. The startling truth is that if you stumble over milk his adec, it may be because you watch questionable TV shows. If you stumble over the doctrine of election, it may be because you still use some shady business practices. If you stumble over God-centered work of Christ on the cross, it may be because you love money and spend too much on yourself and too little for others, the pathway to maturity

10:24and to solid biblical food is not first becoming an intelligent person, but becoming an obedient person. What you do with alcohol and sex and money and leisure and food and computer have more to do with your capacity for solid food than where you went to school? Or what books you read? Yeah, the key to getting our heads around doctrine is a matter of making sure our hearts love what they should love. It's about daily habits, daily faithfulness, feeding the right daily appetites. I guess Hebrews teaches us the primary obstacle to doctrinal maturity is spiritual and moral, not intellectual. That is a really good word from this text of Hebrews, especially as we try to think through milk his adec. Of course, that doesn't mean there are not other challenges to Bible reading. There are. There are a lot of other challenges to Bible reading as we covered over the 13-plus years of Aspects of John.

11:25You can see all that in the Aspects of John Book. We look at all sorts of challenges beyond personal holiness and look at spiritual opposition, spiritual warfare in our Bible reading. That's real. That's very real. We talk about the challenges of reading an ancient text by the biggest and oldest book we'll ever try to read to the intrusions of a busy life, to the struggles with boredom with the text. We just find that boring is hard to engage and of course with intrusive social media habits, the pangs, the buzzes, the notifications. And then you've got seasons of depression that we go through or just plain laziness with literacy. That's another problem. Not to mention all the physical limitations like dyslexia and aging eyesight. Those are serious challenges to reading. You can find those and more factors packed into that first chapter in the Aspects of John Book. A little section I called on Bible reading, Bible neglect and Bible memory. I had let off with it because I think this is a particular highlight of the history of this podcast. Bible reading helps with so much to consider, so much advice, so much from Pastor John's life wisdom that he has picked up along the many decades that he's been reading his Bible.

12:25Thank you, Pastor John. Next time, the joy that sustained Jesus. I'm Tony Ranki, Pastor John. I'll see you back here on Monday.